In 2015, a published version of the first chapter in Robert Macfarlane’s last book, Landmarks, went viral.
As Robert Macfarlane prepared to write Underland, he recorded everything in a series of notebooks. Battered, bruised and smudged, they accompanied the writer from the catacombs of Paris to Greenlandic glaciers, archiving the landscape.
The don of nature writing on the lure of the world underground, staycations with his family, and the planet’s prospects for the future
Posted to celebrate the publication of Holloway by Robert Macfarlane, Stanley Donwood and Dan Richards.
“Heartwood”: a tree’s heartwood is its innermost core. I wrote this poem (song, charm-against-harm) for any tree anywhere that faces unjust felling - and especially for the street trees of Sheffield. The art is by Nick Hayes. It is free to use, print, speak, sing... Please share.
As Robert Macfarlane prepared to write Underland, he recorded everything in a series of notebooks. Battered, bruised and smudged, they accompanied the writer from the catacombs of Paris to Greenlandic glaciers, archiving the landscape.
"Sharply, subtly, and very movingly, Masud thinks with places, seeking as she does to find a way back into, and then out of, the traumas of her early life." - Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland: A Deep Time Journey A surprising and lyrical journey--part memoir, part nature book--meditating on the meaning of "flatness" and its literary tradition to find ways to understand ourselves and our trauma in one of nature's most undervalued wonders. For readers of Robert Macfarlane. G. Sebald's Rings of Saturn, Amy Liptrot's The Outrun, and Richard Mabey's Nature Cure Does the concept of "flat" have an undeservedly bad rap? There are centuries' worth of adoration for rolling hills and dramatic, mountainous landscapes. In contrast, flat landscapes are forgettable and seemingly unworthy of poetic or artistic attention. Noreen suffers from complex post-traumatic stress disorder: the product of a profoundly disrupted and unstable childhood. It flattens her emotions, blanks out parts of her memory, and colours her world with anxiety. Undertaking a pilgrimage around Britain's flatlands, seeking solace and belonging, she weaves her impressions of the natural world with poetry, folklore and history, and with recollections of her own early life. Noreen's British-Pakistani heritage makes her a partial outsider in these landscapes: both coloniser and colonised, inheritor and dispossessed. Here violence lies beneath the fantasy of pastoral innocence, and histories of harm are interwoven with nature's power to heal. Here, as in her own family history, are many stories that resist the telling. She pursues these paradoxes fearlessly across the flat, haunted spaces she loves, offering a startlingly strange, vivid and intimate account of the land beneath her feet. Masud combines memoir, nature writing, and literary reflection to explore what can be drawn from these powerful places, and to understand her own experience of complex trauma and post-traumatic stress, as well as grief and loss. A Flat Place is a book that drives to the heart of what it means to experience place -- bodily and psychologically -- and the healing properties of literature and landscape. Product DetailsISBN-13: 9781685890247 Media Type: Paperback Publisher: Melville House Publishing Publication Date: 06-06-2023 Pages: 256About the Author Noreen Masud is a Lecturer in Twentieth Century Literature at the University of Bristol, and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker 2020. Her work focuses on the twentieth century, writing about things which, in one way or another, present variously as absurd, unrevealing, embarrassing or useless. These include aphorisms, flatness, puppets, nonsense, leftovers, earworms, footnotes, rhymes, hymns, surprises, folk songs, colors and superstition.
Nature-writing is a much loved genre at the moment. Nature-writer Robert Macfarlane recommends some of his own favourites.
Eric Ravilious, Chalk Paths Paths that cross Will cross again – Patti Smith Another brilliant series of essays this week on Radio 3’s The Essay in which Robert Macfarlane, author of The…
As Robert Macfarlane prepared to write Underland, he recorded everything in a series of notebooks. Battered, bruised and smudged, they accompanied the writer from the catacombs of Paris to Greenlandic glaciers, archiving the landscape.
In this episode of A Phone Call With Paul Paul Holdengraber speaks with Robert Macfarlane about his new book, Underland, the pleasures and necessities of walking, the threshold experience of the un…
Even since notionally ‘closing’ my glossaries, hundreds more terms have reached me. If you have a place word or words you’d be happy to share, please send me it/them …
Robert Macfarlane by Brian David Stevens 'As Ali Smith has observed, “The place where the natural world meets the arts is a fruitful, fertile place for both.” We might think of that place as an “ecotone” – the biological term for a transition zone between biomes, where two communities meet and in
Highlights From Robert Macfarlane, the acclaimed author of The Old Ways and Underland--a celebration of the language of landscape and the power of words to shape our sense of place For years now, the British writer Robert Macfarlane has been collecting place-words: terms for aspects of landscape, nature, and weather, drawn from dozens of languages and dialects of the British Isles. About the Author: Robert Macfarlane is the author of prizewinning books about landscape and the human heart: Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways, Landmarks, and Underland . 448 Pages Nature, Essays Series Name: Landscapes Description About the Book "First published by Hamish Hamilton 2015. Published with an additional glossary in Penguin Books 2016"--Title page verso. Book Synopsis From Robert Macfarlane, the acclaimed author of The Old Ways and Underland--a celebration of the language of landscape and the power of words to shape our sense of place For years now, the British writer Robert Macfarlane has been collecting place-words: terms for aspects of landscape, nature, and weather, drawn from dozens of languages and dialects of the British Isles. In this, his fifth book, Macfarlane brilliantly explores the linguistic and literary terrain of the British archipelago, from the Shetlands to Cornwall and from Cumbria to Suffolk, offering themed glossaries of hundreds of these rare, deeply local, poetical terms, organized by such geographical terrains as flatlands, uplands, waterlands, coastlands, woodlands, and underlands. Interspersed with this archive of place words are biographical essays in which Macfarlane writes of his favorite authors who have paid close attention to the natural world and who embody in their own work the huge richness of place language--from Barry Lopez and John Muir to Nan Shepard, J. A. Baker, and Roger Deakin. Landmarks is a book about the power of language and how it can become a way to know and love landscape, from a writer acclaimed for his own precision of utterance and distinctive, lyrical voice. Review Quotes SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE Praise from America and England for Landmarks "Landmarks is wildly ambitious, part outdoor adventure story, part literary criticism, part philosophical disquisition, part linquistic excavation project, part mash note. . . It's an argument for sitting down with a book; it's also an argument for going outside and paying attention." - The New York Times "[A] magnificent meditation on the words we have for describing the natural world. . . [Macfarlane] is the great nature writer, and nature poet, of this generation." - Tom Shippey, The Wall Street Journal "Simply one of the best nature history books I have read in years, Landmarks is a stunning paean to the beauty of language, the craft of writing and the power of nature. It is truly a book that will force you to rethink your relationship to the world around you." - The Seattle Times "[A] fascinating, poetic compilation of vocabulary invented to describe the natural world. . .Lucent, lyrical prose evokes Macfarlane's aesthetic, ethical, and powerfully tactile response to nature's enchantments." - Kirkus Reviews "Macfarlane's beautifully written blend of nature writing and lexicon connects the work of his favorite writers to the British Isles' natural settings and the distinctive, lyrical vocabulary used to describe them. . .[An] exceptional compilation." - Publishers Weekly "This joyous meditation on land and language is a love letter to the British Isles." - Observer "Lyrical, charged with a monumental strength. Surely no one since the young Ted Hughes has written about British landscape and wildlife with such fierce enthusiasm. Few writers today have such power to make you look afresh at the familiar . . . making a British countryside come alive as the most exotic place on earth." - Daily Express "Astonishing and revelatory. Please read Landmarks, encounter its wonderful words, let them open your mind . . . start looking at the world in the dazzlingly receptive way they have taught you." - Adam Nicolson, Spectator "As teeming and complex as an ecosystem, rawly moving, enormously pleasurable, historically important and imaginatively compelling, elegant and scholarly." - Melissa Harrison, Financial Times "Passionate and magical...A deep scholarship of the countryside with an adventurous approach, all rendered in immaculate, delicious prose. Macfarlane offers an enriched nature. A kind of manual of how people in love with place and language are created by landscape." - Horatio Clare, Daily Telegraph "So important, enriching. Ought to be read by policymakers, educators, armchair environmentalists and active conservationists the world over." - John Burnside, Guardian About the Author Robert Macfarlane is the author of prizewinning books about landscape and the human heart: Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways, Landmarks, and Underland . He has contributed to Harper's, Granta, The New Yorker, the Observer (London), the Times Literary Supplement (London), and the London Review of Books. He is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
An author is to create a new children's book aimed at reinstating 'nature words' back into children's vocabulary
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERBRITISH BOOK AWARDS CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018A timeless, beautifully designed book for children and adults alike, The Lost Words is a gift that will be pored over and cherished for years to come. All over the country, there are words disappearing from children's lives. These are the words of the natural world; Dandelion, Otter, Bramble and Acorn, all gone. A wild landscape of imagination and play is rapidly fading from our children's minds. The Lost Words stands against the disappearance of wild childhood. It is a joyful celebration - in art and word - of nearby nature and its wonders. With acrostic spell-poems by award-winning writer Robert Macfarlane and illustrations by Jackie Morris, this enchanting book evokes the irreplaceable magic of language and nature for all ages. *** Discover The Lost Spells, the magical companion book from the creators of a literary phenomenon. ***Praise for The Lost Words:'The most beautiful and thought-provoking book I've read this year' Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Observer'Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris have made a thing of astonishing beauty' Alex Preston, Observer 'My top book of the year' Susan Hill, Spectator'Gorgeous to look at and to read. Give it to a child to bring back the magic of language - and its scope' Jeanette Winterson, Guardian; 128 pages; Published: 05/10/2017
Adventures, prose of great beauty and deep concerns ... a book that offers a new perspective on the human impact on our planet
"The beauty of the earth is the first beauty," writes Irish poet and philosopher John O'Donohue, whose wise books I return to again and again. "Millions of years before us the earth lived in wild elegance. Landscape is the first-born...
From acorn to wren, a vibrant encyclopedia of enchantments reweaving our broken web of belonging with the rest of nature.
